van den Eynde B
Bull Mem Acad R Med Belg. 2001;156(10-12):548-55.
Cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL) play a major role in the recognition and destruction of tumor cells by the immune system. In the last ten years, our team has identified at the molecular level a number of markers, called antigens, whose presence at the surface of tumor cells allow CTL to recognize such cells. Some of these antigens, including those encoded by the MAGE genes, are absent on all normal cells, and therefore constitute ideal targets for cancer vaccines aimed at increasing the activity of anti-tumor lymphocytes. Such vaccines are currently tested in clinical trials with melanoma patients. These antigens consist of small peptides that are presented by HLA molecules and that result from the degradation of intracellular proteins. This degradation is performed by an intracellular proteolytic complex called the proteasome. We recently observed that dendritic cells, which in the lymph node are responsible for antigen presentation to the lymphocytes in order to initiate the immune response, are inefficient to produce some peptides because they contain a different proteasome called "immunoproteasome". This unexpected observation may have important implications for the choice of vaccination strategies.
细胞溶解性T淋巴细胞（CTL）在免疫系统识别和破坏肿瘤细胞的过程中发挥着主要作用。在过去十年中，我们的团队在分子水平上鉴定出了许多标记物，称为抗原，肿瘤细胞表面存在这些抗原使得CTL能够识别此类细胞。其中一些抗原，包括由MAGE基因编码的抗原，在所有正常细胞上都不存在，因此构成了旨在增强抗肿瘤淋巴细胞活性的癌症疫苗的理想靶点。此类疫苗目前正在黑色素瘤患者的临床试验中进行测试。这些抗原由HLA分子呈递的小肽组成，这些小肽是细胞内蛋白质降解的产物。这种降解是由一种称为蛋白酶体的细胞内蛋白水解复合物完成的。我们最近观察到，在淋巴结中负责将抗原呈递给淋巴细胞以启动免疫反应的树突状细胞，由于它们含有一种不同的蛋白酶体，即“免疫蛋白酶体”，因此在产生某些肽方面效率低下。这一意外发现可能对疫苗接种策略的选择具有重要意义。
